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Topic: AVR vs Z8 Encore (Read 2362 times)

I know the Z8 very well and I have the programmer/dev board for it. I have used it for several projects and understand it. However the 3.3v limits are anoying. Is the AVR a good replacement? For my current project I don't want to go to the next level of ARM or gumstix but I would like to in the future. So the zilog will work for me but there are some headaches. If the AVR makes things easier I'm willing to switch and buy the new equipment.

However the Z8 has some nice debug features and I was wondering if I can get those for the AVR. I can with the programmer connected to the chip monitor every register and all the perifrials as well as step through code one line at a time. Is this possible with the various avr software/compilers? It seems to me from the $50 robot tutorial that you have to download the code with seperate programs from the compiler and if thats the case then it makes development that much harder for me faster to overcome problems I know then to learn a whole new set of new problems

I've never actually used any of those processors so I can't say either way, but here is an idea, you might want to think about using an FPGA demo board and using soft cores, that way you have greater control over how you implement your hardware and can tailor it to your robot over and over again add to it and take away from it. The performance would more than likly go up and like I said with an FPGA you have he ability to add new custom hardware to suite your needs without adding any new physical ICs. Just a thought.